The Two Faces of Self-Determination

This chapter tells two stories, both of which take place during the same time period, and both of which are true. One is the story of a revolution in Navajo and Indigenous education-an account of opportunity seized in the name of self-determination, and of how the “unimaginable became doable” (Pfeiffer, 1993). The other is a story of a school and a process held hostage to a Federal bureaucracy that, despite its rhetoric, stymied self-determination at every turn. The two stories intertwine. They are two faces of the struggle for Indigenous education control.